


between the shadow and the soul

by mintpearlvoice



Category: Daredevil (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Caretaking, F/M, First Aid, Hurt/Comfort, Idiots in Love, Protective Matt Murdock, Unreliable Narrator, Whump, extremely soft vigilantes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-03
Updated: 2019-05-03
Packaged: 2020-02-16 17:55:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,365
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18696439
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mintpearlvoice/pseuds/mintpearlvoice
Summary: Elektra still loses her fight with Bullseye in #181, still collapses on Matt's doorstep... but manages to survive her injuries. Matt has let her walk away one too many times. This time, there's no way he's letting her go.(basically, comics canon mattelektra extremely soft soulmates)





	between the shadow and the soul

**Author's Note:**

> title is from pablo neruda!  
> "I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,  
> or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.  
> I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,  
> in secret, between the shadow and the soul."

“Put up a pretty good fight, Toots,” Bullseye sneers. “But me? I’m magic. And, for my next trick…”

She’ll never forget that electric-shock cold. Her own knife shoved between her ribs; Bullseye flinging her aside, leaving her for dead. Contempt radiates from him as he watches her stagger away. I know you’re doomed, he seems to say with his upright posture, the tilt of his chin. And I don’t even care enough to make it quick.

The fucked-up thing is, he’s completely right. She doesn’t have the stamina left to reach for a weapon. All she can do is stagger away, desperately clutching the burning heat of her injuries. Every breath makes her chest twinge, her lungs crackle and slosh.

Out of the parking garage. Down the street. Down another. There’s only one place left for her to go. Nothing matters anymore… nothing except the chance to say goodbye.  

People are pointing at her. Whispering. Taking pictures. She blocks them all out. One foot in front of the other; hot blood soaking through her glove. The final three steps up to her destination feel like climbing a mountain. Before she can even knock on the brownstone’s door, it opens.

His cane falls from his hand as he kneels beside her. “Elektra…” Gathering her into his arms; his touch skimming her body, feeling for what his heightened senses surely already tell him. That she’s been slashed across the throat- shallow, but it hit something- and stabbed in the chest.

“Matt,” she whispers, shivering as she leans into his warmth. The street’s been lurching under her, and she can’t stop shivering, but now she can rest. She closes her eyes and breathes in his familiar scent. The arms of the only man she’s ever loved… she could die here. That would be all right.

“Don’t just stand there,” he yells at the crowd. “You- call 911, give me your phone!”

Someone, apparently, does.

“This is Matt Murdock.. there’s a woman, she collapsed on my porch, I think she’s dying. Please- oh god, there’s. A lot of blood,” he says shakily. And, “Yes, I have a first-aid kit… saran wrap? I think so, please just hurry…”

He’s gone, rushing inside. Overhead, the gold of a streetlight blurs like the moon. Cold concrete-brick steps under her bare back. You can’t see the stars in New York, even on a clear night like this one. All the lights have fallen to earth, or been hurled down. There’s nothing she can do but lie there. Nothing else to be done.

Matt hurries back, and he’s cradling her head in his lap, deft fingers careful at her throat. “Okay, I’ll put pressure on it… okay,” he says into the phone, and hangs up.

Through the pain and the dizziness, even though nothing feels real, Elektra is almost impressed. He’s doing such a good job of pretending to be a normal person, someone who’s never had blood on his hands before.

“Oh god. Elektra, stay with me. Please- the ambulance is almost here, we’re only a few blocks from the hospital. Stay with me, please.” His voice is anguished with gentleness, agonizing like another twist of the knife; his eyes, even unfocused, are wide and desperate. A tear rolls down his face. Splashes on hers.

 If she thinks about the pain, it’s going to overwhelm her: mind over matter, Elektra. You’ve made it this far. She focuses just on Matt stroking her hair, on the way his hand spans her neck as he presses down on a bandage, crinkly saran wrap over a sterile dressing. Not on the electric stinging ache between her ribs, where she was pierced with her own sai. Just on the rise and fall of his chest, so much slower and steadier than hers. No one else has ever touched her like this. So careful, almost worshipful, as if she’s someone that a man could break. If her limbs weren’t made of carved marble, she would touch him back.

“Matt,” she manages, not even sure if it’s loud enough to hear. Her heart is pounding, punching her from the inside, as if she’s just sprinted an entire subway route. She fights to cough up something thick that floods her mouth. Tastes blood. It’s as if there’s a weight on her chest, crushing her. Pushing down a little further every time she tries to breathe. As if Bullseye’s meaty hands are pressing the last shreds of air from her lungs. Breathing is a battle, but there’s so much she wants to say.

“Save your strength,” he tells her before she can make another attempt, his low voice soft with agonized gentleness. “You’re going to be okay.”

But she summons up the last shreds of her strength, making the cold wetness shift on her throat and the burning warmth broil in her chest like a furious tide, forcing breath into words: “I’m so sorry.”

For letting revenge and the sweeping tide of bloodlust twist her priorities. For every time she walked away from him. For every innocent life she’s stolen without a single second thought.

For thinking, even for a moment, that she might deserve this impossible, magnificent man.

He presses his forehead against hers, and even though the world has stopped feeling real, she could never doubt his warmth. “There is nothing you need to apologize for.”

That’s when the paramedics arrive. “Mr. Murdock, you need to stand back,” one of them says. Another, shouting over him: “Do you know this woman? Who is she?”

They don’t even bother talking to her. She’s just a body. A thing to do things to. Although she’s disposed of many corpses, being talked over is like the metallic-iron smell of blood. So much different when it’s yours.

Matt shakes his head, feigning disorientation as the paramedics lift her onto a bright orange gurney. “There’s a lot of blood… her throat, I pressed down on it like the dispatcher said, but there’s still so much blood. And her shirt, it’s wet, I think she said she couldn’t breathe…”

One of them nods. “Breathing is clear on the left, decreased breathing sounds on the right.” The paramedics are talking to each other, not to her. They haul her into the ambulance, and she stifles a scream. She will never be comfortable with strangers’ hands on her. The oxygen mask shoved in her face like a muzzle, the shears slicing her clothing away. There’s some sort of measuring tool clipped onto her finger. Less intimate than a stethoscope, but she still hates it.

“We’re going to need to needle-decompress the chest,” one of the paramedics says. The needle he comes towards her with is as long as one of her daggers, and her mind floods with panic.

_Matt, don’t let them do this to me- I’d rather die than feel this helpless, I don’t want this-_

In an instant he’s kneeling at her side. His hands close around hers, thumbs smoothing circles into her palm. “I’m here, sweetheart.” His voice cuts through the chaos of the ambulance, precise as a dagger. “I’m not going to let them hurt you.”

In this moment, she could be entirely alone in the world. She could be just another dark-haired Jane Doe on the mean streets of New York. Pay her hospital bill and vanish before everyone out for her blood caught up with her… and there were so many out for her blood, or at least the little still left in her veins.

“I’ve got you. You’re going to be okay.”

 _I’ve got you._ As the needle slides between her ribs, she wishes it was just its cold, startling bite that made her shiver, or the blood congealing on her skin. But what scares her more than the paramedics peering down at her, more than their matter-of-fact touches roaming her body, is the fact that tonight has changed everything. She’s not alone anymore. She can’t fend for herself, not with injuries like these. Once, she walked away from Matt Murdock without looking back- and he let her go.

But her instincts tell her that, if she survives tonight… it may finally be time to give the devil his due.


End file.
